Monday, December 3, 2012

From the FreeP: Penalties hurt Terriers in loss to BC on road

By Tim Healey/DFP Staff

CHESTNUT HILL — Going into a weekend home-and-home series with No. 1 Boston College, the No. 9 Boston University men’s hockey team led the league in a surprising category: fewest penalty minutes per game, averaging 10.5.

A team traditionally known for spending time in the penalty box, the Terriers (8–5, 6–4 Hockey East) returned to their ways in a weekend split with the Eagles (11–2, 10–2 Hockey East). BU took 12 penalties — 11 of them minors — for 32 minutes in a 4–2 win Friday at Agganis Arena and followed that up with eight more two-minute minors in Saturday’s 5–2 loss at Conte Forum.

But what hurt the Terriers the most, according to BU coach Jack Parker, was the team’s inability to kill them off. The Eagles struck four times on the man-advantage Saturday night to blow the game open by the end of the second period.

“Rule number one is don’t beat yourself in any game we play,” Parker said. “And we failed badly at rule number one [Saturday]. This is a bad combination — we took a lot of penalties, and I thought a lot of them were stupid penalties, and we did a lousy job killing penalties … That was the difference in the game.”

Among the so-called “stupid” infractions were penalties that came in the heat of the moment, when the Terriers let their emotions get the best of them against their archrival.
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